The most commonly used fossil fuels are natural gas, gasoline, distillate fuel oils, and coal. The need to reduce consumption of such fuels and to simultaneously reduce pollutants from the exhaust gas resulting from fuel combustion is a major challenge.
Fuel additives of the prior art are generally limited to use in liquid fossil fuels to include gasoline and distillate fuel oils. Although the benefits of using a metallic catalyst containing iron and over-based magnesium are well known to those skilled in the art, prior art has been limited to concentrations of iron from about 30 PPM to 70 PPM by weight and magnesium content about 1 part by weight of magnesium to every 3 to 8 parts of iron. The average particle size was also limited to about 0.007 microns. The resultant high ash content, although often within the ASTM specification, and the large particle size of the prior art are limitations of the previous art. Such large particle sizes, aside from adding costs to the additive, also introduce metallic particles into the air at a level higher than that recommended by the US Environmental Protection Agency.
What is needed is a new catalyst fuel additive which can be utilized in a wider variety of fossil fuels, has such low particle density and particle size that damage to equipment using the additive is virtually eliminated and any metallic ash released into the atmosphere is considerably below current EPA recommended standards.
The types of combustion processes which can utilize such catalysts include but are not limited to distillate fuel oil burned by combustion processes, natural gas combustion, stationary natural gas turbines, natural gas-fired reciprocating engines, gasoline and diesel engines, large stationary diesel and all stationary dual-fuel engines. The lower the concentration of metallic ash and the smaller the particle size, the lower the risks to the environment and equipment in which the natural gas is combusted.